This NOVA documentary which you can watch on PBS.org website documents the pre-race and planning of the Great Robot Race where driverless vehicles race on a 130-mile course. The prize is $2 million dollars.

This program was aired on PBS in 2006.

Frontline documentary “Heat” investigates the great crises of global warming. You can watch the full program in the link provided.

CO2 emission have been rising and is at records level. China and India are in a growth spur adding to the energy demands. In order to stop global warming, we have to curb our addiction to fossil fuel which is economic engine of our lives. The documentary talks about technologies such as clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration.

The second largest contribution to CO2 emissions are vehicles. There is a need to increase fuel efficiency standards. But the car industry is against it. Big oil is also resisting change and the consequences are not good.

Corn-based ethanol as an alternative to middle-east oil is now hugh business. Some say there is a net benefit. And other says that it may even increase carbon emission depending on how the corn is processed. Corn simply may not be an efficient fuel crop and may not a solution to greenhouse gas.

In Europe and Japan, the government have gotten farther in its strides to increase renewable energies.

In its early days, nuclear power had to overcome obstacles of the fears of accidents such as Three-Mile Island and anti-nuclear activists.

Cap and trade is the concept where companies has a maximum quota on emissions. If it emits more than their quota, they will need to purchase from companies that emit less.

While politicians debate this concept. The earth has seen its explosion of wild fires, large hurricanes like Katrina, and unbelievable droughts throughout the world.

China has passed America as the largest emitter of CO2. India and some other countries are also emitting more.

You can watch the full Frontline documentary “The Choice 2008” about Obama, McCain, and the 2008 election.

Frontline has the reputation of producing good well-balanced documentaries on controversial topics. This program talked about Obama and his roots in the black community. Obama was well-known at Harvard where he was quite political then too and where he later took the prestigious post of president of the Harvard Law Review.

The program talked about McCain and his relationship with the Bush administration and how he got the reputation of being a maverick. It showed footage of his prisoner of war days as well as his involvement with the Keating Five Scandal (video of Keating Scandal linked here).

Watch the Nova documentary “Car of the Future” online.

This documentary explores alternative fuel vehicles which will be needed in the future as demand for fossil fuel outgrow supplies. And because this film is hosted by Tom and Ray Magliozzi (also known as Click and Clack) of the radio show CarTalk, you are sure to get a few laughs as well.

You can watch “The Hidden Epidemic – Heart Disease In America” on PBS website linked here.

Watch Nova’s documentary “Absolute Zero” chronicles the history of scientists’ attempts at trying to reach the coldest possible temperature which is known as “absolute zero”.

This video program is about two-hours long but broken up into 10 parts.

It starts with defining what cold is. As gases are lowered in temperature, it changes states from gas, to liquid, to solid. And at one-billionth of a degree above absolute zero, a new state known as Bose-Einstein condensate is achieved.

Passing a laser through this condensate, scientist is able to slow down light. Other remarkable properties of the super-cold is superconductivity. The program concludes with applications of super-cooled quantum devices such as quantum computers.